Week 1

Welcome to the Introduction to Literature (ENC1102) class here at the Art Institute.  As your instructor, I will post description of course material and assignments and discussion of key terms and selections presented in class (and additional material too, perhaps).  You should visit the site to stay abreast of material and apprised of any changes to assignments or selections to be covered.

       This first page may be updated to cover week one's lecture and discussion before we meet again for class week 2.  Until then  . . .

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One of the poem's in this week's selections is titled "The Birds Have Vanished," written by an 8th century poet named Li Po.  In four lines, two unrhymed couplets, each a complete sentence, the poet describes in present tense a mountain view.  In the first couplet, the mountain has not yet made its appearance; we see a sky from which "the birds have vanished" and "the last cloud drains away"(lines 1-2).  We are perhaps made aware of the evanescence of things, that what is here is transient, changing, disappearing right before our eyes.  In the second stanza (also a couplet) the speaker's presence and that of a mountain appear together:  "We sit together, the mountain and me, / until only the mountain remains"(3-4).  The reader becomes aware, again, of presence followed by an absence.  It seems a riddle, what to make of this sitting and of the speaker's disappearance.  Certainly the mountain will not fly nor drain away and in that it becomes, in this interpretation, a feature of the landscape that invites us to contemplate what endures, and all that a mountain and birds and clouds may suggest metaphorically.  Imaginatively, we may lose our ordinary sense of self and of space and time by meditating upon these images.

We are born, grow to youth and maturity, age, and die . . . uncaged we hope!, and in this our lives reflect the age old succession of the seasons and life elemental.  We live in time, and in space, and the phases of life and nature provide rich subject matter for writers reflecting on the experience of living.  Nature, in fact, often becomes a mirror of ourselves and the phases we find ourselves experiencing.  We are part of universal nature, and we bring our particular human nature to it, with our griefs, our joys, our forebodings, aspirations, and imaginings.  The Book of Nature informs us to the extent we take the time to read it and to acknowledge how it shapes us. A falling leaf, a sudden snowfall, the stars shining in the blackness of space–these speak to us.  Look at the poem "Music of Spheres," by Jean Follain, and ask yourself what the various elements in the poem bring to mind.  Jot down your responses, pinned to the various images you find in the poem, and of course the narrative arc of the poem.  Google the title phrase.  What kind of experience do you read here in the poem, taking all its details into account?

You will notice in the first paragraph above that I reproduce lines of text to illustrate and to ground my reading in the precise language used by the poet.  You will want to present portions of the text to readers and show how you have arrived at your conclusions about its construction and meaning.  Use quotation marks around the word-for-word phrasings and lines and a slash or virgule to separate lines of text that run no more than three successive lines.  Blocks of text four or more lines in length should be indented or offset 10 spaces, without use of quotation marks.  In "Snow Toward Evening,"  Melville Cane shows the surprise and delight of an unexpected turn in the weather.  The poem begins thus:

         

          Suddenly the sky turned grey.

          The day,

          Which had been bitter and chill,

          Grew soft and still.     (1-4)

                                         

The lines above, by virtue of end rhyme, appear as couplets of uneven length that come to a hushed, extended close with the words "soft and still."  The next line is a single word, "Quietly," from which the remainder of the poem hangs, as if suspended, like the "petals cool and white," the snow that falls "from some invisible blossoming tree" (lines 7, 6).   The airy dance of flakes is wonderful, a kind of epiphany, a manifestation of divine grace.